My life

For a few hectic days, I spent eight or more hours a day on the phone, talking to Ellen back in Little Rock and to Broyles and Holtz in Miami. The pressure and criticism were getting to Holtz, especially the charge that he was a racist. The only evidence against him was the fact that when he had coached at North Carolina State, he had endorsed ultra-conservative Senator Jesse Helms for reelection. After spending hours talking to Holtz, I could tell he wasn’t a racist, nor was he political. Helms had been decent to him and he had returned the favor.

On December 30, three days before the game, the players dropped their suit and released their twelve allies from their commitment not to play. It still wasn’t over. Holtz was so upset he told me that he was going to call Frank Broyles and resign. I immediately called Frank and told him not to answer the phone in his room that night no matter what. I was convinced Lou would wake up in the morning wanting to win the game.

For the next two days the team worked like crazy. They had been eighteen-point underdogs to start, and after the three stars were out, the game was taken off the odds chart. But the players whipped one another up into a frenzy.

On the night of January 2, Hillary and I sat in the Orange Bowl watching Oklahoma go through warmups. The day before, top-ranked Texas had lost to Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl. All Oklahoma had to do was beat crippled Arkansas to win the national championship. Along with everybody else, they thought it was going to be a cakewalk.

Then the Razorbacks took the field. They trotted out in a straight line and slapped the goal post before they started their drills. Hillary watched them, grabbed my arm, and said, “Just look at them, Bill. They’re going to win.” With smothering defense and a record-setting 205 yards rushing from reserve back Roland Sales, the Razorbacks routed Oklahoma 31–6, perhaps the biggest and certainly the most unlikely victory in the storied history of Arkansas football. Lou Holtz is a high-strung, skinny little fellow who paced the sidelines in a way that reminded Hillary of Woody Allen. I was grateful that this bizarre episode gave me the chance to know him well. He’s brilliant and gutsy, perhaps the best on-thefield coach in America. He’s had other great seasons at Arkansas, Minnesota, Notre Dame, and South Carolina, but he’ll never have another night quite like that one.